Angela Rayner says ‘time’s up’ for dangerous landlords as Labour launches ‘campaign’

Labour has vowed to end the scourge of cold, damp and mouldy rented homes with tough new laws saving tenants hundreds of pounds a year.

Shadow Housing Secretary Angela Rayner told The Mirror that “time is up” for unscrupulous landlords if her party gets into power.
And Net Zero chief Ed Miliband said Rishi Sunak had “sold the renters of this country down the river” by abandoning laws that would slash bills by an average of £250 a year.

If Labour wins the General Election, landlords will have to ensure homes are up to a higher energy efficiency standard or face hefty fines. Flip-flopping Rishi Sunak had been set to do this, but U-turned in September last year – saddling millions of renters with £750million extra in energy bills each year.

The move will bring a million people out of fuel poverty, Labour believes, with Mr Miliband branding this a “crusade”. Unveiling the policy to The Mirror he said: “This is incredibly important for the more than one million renters in our country who are living in cold, leaky homes, paying hundreds of pounds more on their energy bills than they need to.

“And I think it highlights a big difference in this campaign, which is we are willing to act to cut bills.” Ms Rayner said she would oversee a swathe of new protections to ensure tenants aren’t kicked out for no reason, hit by massive rent hikes or forced to live in sub-standard conditions.

She said: “Landlords that think they can get away with leaving people in hazardous environments or hiking rents or evicting people on a whim, time is up for them under a Labour Government.” Under Labour’s plans, all rented homes will be required to have an Energy Performance Certificate rating of at least C by 2030.

At the moment those who fail to meet the lower E grade face fines of £5,000 – although the sanctions under the new policy have yet to be set. Upgrading from E to C would save an average tenant £400 a year in energy bills, it is estimated.

Mr Miliband described raising standards as “basic decency”. He said: “Fuel poverty is a stain on our country, and you can’t tackle fuel poverty without tackling the issues around some private landlords not having their houses up to a decent standard.”

He went on: “This is going to be a crusade to tackle this.” Ms Rayner said the Tories have “completely failed to deliver” for renters.

She pointed to the case of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died in 2020 as a result of deadly mould in the Rochdale flat his parents rented. “That should never have happened in a modern society like ours,” she said.

Under Labour’s plans landlords would be ordered to improve insulation and potentially forced to replace single-glaze windows to bring up energy efficiency. But the party’s manifesto said no one will be made to rip out their boilers.

It comes as Keir Starmer said a Labour Government will pass a law preventing landlords cashing in on “bidding wars” between potential tenants. Asked how Labour would tackle escalating rents without bringing in a cap, he said: “You can stop the bidding wars because what happens there is the landlord effectively goes between two or three different renters driving the rent up and up and up.

“We won’t allow them to do that. We will introduce a law that says you can’t do it because at the moment what happens is they sort of go back between the renters.”

He also vowed to bring an end to landlords demanding “extortionate” deposits and tackling cases of mould and damp. The frontbenchers made the remarks after being shown around the Canada Water development in East London, one of the largest mixed use regeneration projects in London.